Coming out of school, I did not have much experience holding formal meetings in a professional context, therefore, what I did learn, I learned via limited experiences by attending meetings during my thus far short work life. So I really appreciated the informal, constructive criticism that I received from co-workers. Here are some tips:

1. Always issue out an agenda stating explicitly the objective of the meeting prior to the meeting to all participants. Ex. What problem are we meeting to resolve and who is involved? If there is more than 1 meeting upon the same subject, always issue out an agenda summarizing the results of the previous meeting and the actions to be taken by the appropriate people prior to the said meeting.

2. Commence the meeting with a short name calling of all those present.

3. If it is the first meeting, commence by explaining the problem at hand and ask the obvious question, how do we go about solving this? If it is not the first meeting, commence by stating the actions from the previous meeting and confirm if the actions are completed by the relevant people.

4. The conversation will tend to divert, especially as emotion and denial of responsibility start coming into play. As the host and driver of the meeting, always stick to the agenda and do not be afraid to cut in when deviation from the agenda becomes too large.

5. When all points on the agenda are touched upon, do a quick round-table for further questions. Then end the meeting with a thank you.

Tip: When writing out the actions, if unsure of who was responsible for a certain action, call the suspected individual and confirm. Never write out an action for somebody when you do not have confirmation either from the meeting or via a personal call.

Tip: Stack the Minutes (the agenda for every meeting) with most recent notes & actions on top to oldest notes & actions at the bottom.

If you have more tips, I’d love to here them!